Harnessing the Power of Dark Structures for Optimal Resilience

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed new techniques using metasurfaces to control points of darkness, or optical singularities. These dark spots have potential applications in remote sensing, precision measurement, and imaging. The team designed metasurfaces with titanium dioxide nanopillars to create an array of optical singularities, which could be used as optical traps for capturing atoms or as reference positions for imaging. They also developed extremely stable points of darkness in a polarized optical field, known as polarization singularities, which are topologically protected and can withstand perturbations. These advancements in optical singularities have implications for remote sensing, covert detection, and creating compact, lightweight optical devices.